it started out as a very old watercolour paper on heavy paper and it was terrible – so I decided to paint over it. I applied thin layers of Gesso to cover up the watercolour/pastel/pigmented inks, yet the strength of the pigmented inks is like a dye, so the bright orange, yellow, red kept being visible as I was trying to coat the paper with the white Gesso. I started painting the rectangular shapes with Acrylic. These shapes were a continuation on a theme that I started a few paintings back – to explore colour and movement with basic repetitive shapes. I had “water” in mind – because I knew I wanted to use different Blue hues, but as I stepped back from the piece the thought came to me that my shapes looked like bacteria or a virus under a microscope. Alright, so I had to change this! That’s when I thought of creating the mosaic look. As I painted and viewed the various colours going down I would paint over some areas that didn’t feel looked quite right next to the neighbouring colour, and also put many layers of paint over the areas where the pigmented inks were still showing through. Initially I used pencil to define some of the “tile” shapes, and then sprayed the piece with a matte fixative spray to it wouldn’t smudge. Once dry, the feeling of all these layers of acrylic on 300# watercolour paper was smooth and slick, and the pencil was barely noticeable… When I’m painting Abstracts likes this I always push myself, and ask “What if I do this?”… So I picked up my X-acto knife and began carving out the spaces between the tiles, and I liked it. ESPECIALLY where those boldly coloured pigmented inks were poking through! An aside: I really do have a “thing” for real ceramic tiles, and old Spanish-influenced architecture, so that’s why I wanted it to have a very old, worn, style. This is probably much longer of an explanation than you expected! Thanks so much for asking. I feel very close to my art. I hadn’t been able to paint for a number of years because of health issues, and I just started painting again in October, hence my enthusiasm! 🙂

Well it came out amazing! It sounds like you had such an amazing time creating this piece! Have you done more on this same theme? I love the shapes and the color, I love being inspired when I see others artworks. Art is such an amazing thing. 🙂 Thank you for sharing!

Thank you Kimberly. This is the only “mosaic tile” effect I’ve done, but the ribbons of colour thing has been experimented with in a few other paintings. If you want, you can find them under the “images” menu. Take care, and happy creating to you!